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Support GGA!

Dear friends and comrades,

     SGA Alumni are undergoing a large-scale fundraising drive for Gregory the Great Academy for the upcoming school year 2013-2014.  The Clairvaux Institute has setup a task force to look for a temporary location for next year.  They are entering into negotiations with 2 potential properties in Scranton.  We need your support right now!  Depending on how much the Academy has in “Monthly Donations” they will be able to negotiate a better lease agreement.  Please consider a monthly donation to an extraordinary cause: the manly education of Catholic gentlemen in the Liberal Arts.

To donate, please visit this link.

The best kind of contribution is a monthly donation (no matter how small, any amount helps!); if you cannot count on a monthly donation, please consider a one time donation.  Again, no amount is too small.  Your donation is tax deductible, and because the organization backing Gregory the Great Academy, The Clairvaux Institute, is a religious organization your donation counts toward your tithing duty.

Will you consider donating $30.00/month?  That’s a dollar a day!  Store up treasure in heaven!

Please pray for the cause.  Prayers are more important than money.  Please contact me with any questions or to pass on any contact info of potential donors.

In Christ and St. Gregory the Great,

Peter Hilaire Bloch

PS – Read up on the history of SGA/GGA and the vision for the future

A History and Vision of Gregory the Great Academy
After existing for nearly two decades under the sponsorship of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) as St. Gregory’s Academy, a group of teachers and alumni are in the process of re-founding the Academy in order to continue the good things it has provided its students. St. Gregory’s Academy, now to be calledGregory the Great Academy, has its roots in the Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas (KU). The philosophy of the IHP provided the overall form within which a variety of other influences flourished.
The Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas began in 1970 and ran until the University shut it down in 1979. There were at that time a number of attempts to reinvigorate the Liberal Arts in the face of the institution decadence of the 1960s, but the IHP’s tone and vision were exceptional. Staffed by three professors, each with strong, yet complementary, personalities—John Senior, Dennis Quinn, and Frank Nelick—the program sought not so much to return students to the basics of a time past, as to reawaken them to the ever-present wonders of reality. The motto of the program sums this up well: Nascantur in admiratione, let them be born in wonder.
Clairvaux Institute Launches Development Committee for the Future Home of Gregory the Great Academy
Thanks to the generosity of alumni and benefactors of St. Gregory’s Academy, the Clairvaux Institute is pleased to announce the launch of a development committee dedicated to the purpose of finding a permanent home for Gregory the Great Academy.
Mr. Howard Clark is the committee director, assisted by Mr. Sean Fitzpatrick and Mr. Paul Prezzia. In recent weeks, Mr. Clark and Mr. Fitzpatrick they have been scouting properties, communicating with diocesan officials, canon lawyers, and insurance agents, working with realtors, and gleaning information on founding schools. Mr. Prezzia has been lending his aid in the many clerical tasks that this project requires, such as researching and filing initial paperwork for a private independent institution. Together, they are enthusiastic and absolutely committed to this project, working hard to overcome the many inherent and inescapable challenges.

I have not abandoned you

My dear friends,

I have not abandoned the Draught.  I have been on vacation.  One must vacation every once and a while.  It is important, you see, to take breaks and take your eye from your work.  I find it always gives me a wider and unbiased perspective to leave something for a bit, and upon return, you are able to re-work the canvas with ease and dexterity, like Yeats telling us that our stitching and unstitching has been for naught if the marks of our labor are visible.

“Therefore, it is meet that noble minds keep ever with their like.  For who so firm that cannot be seduced?” -Cassius, Julius Caesar

We have to stick together to build this community.  We have to keep with our like, or else we will be seduced by the culture.  It is easy to break a single stick, or to bend a single rod of metal, but it is very difficult indeed to break a…bundle of sticks…or a group of metal rods to bend.  So, like Wordsworth’s flowers, we must up gather ourselves from our sleep.  And thus, I’ll be forthcoming on some great news regarding Gregory the Great Academy, on my own artwork, on some of my dear friends artwork, and on some cultural and silly topics to delight and make you a-mused.

Be happy,

Peter Hilaire

From Marcus Aurelius

“Everything exists for some end, a horse, a vine. Why dost thou wonder? Even the sun will say, I am for some purpose, and the rest of the gods will say the same. For what purpose then art thou? to enjoy pleasure? See if common sense allows this.”

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